Since the beginning of Creation, archery has played an important part in the lives of men. The bow has been a weapon of self-defence and warfare, and until recent times, a primary tool for big game hunting. Today, archery is used extensively for indoor and outdoor target shooting, recreational sport and big game hunting. The bow's limited range capabilities and quiet report make it an ideal tool for this purpose. Until recent times the bow has had two basic configurations, the long bow and the short recurve composite bow with extensive variations of each type bow. The basic bow materials are wood, or wood backed with sinew, faced with horn, while some heavy pulling crossbows were made of steel. Bow designs remained within these limitations until the discovery and development of fiberglass backing and facing, held together with epoxy, and other powerful glues, providing the beginning of modern conventional bow designs, which are greatly refined versions of the older long bow and shorter recurve bow types.
The Allen compound bow, U.S. Pat. No. 3,486,495, Dec. 30, 1969, has been a radical departure from these conventional bow designs, while providing a bow with the benefit of a reduction of force necessary to hold the bow at full draw by using a mechanical advantage provided by an eccentric wheel and cable configuration attached to the tips of a short powerful bow limb.
Another type of bow is the Islas bow, U.S. Patent No. 4,287,867, Sep. 8, 1981, which is basically an Allen type bow with extremely short limbs, with a complex riser mounted eccentric wheel and cable system, providing power to a longer, lighter limb system, which produces a functional bow.
Another type is the Nishioka bow, U.S. Pat. No. 3,744,473, Jul. 10, 1973, which features a pivoting limb mounted at either end of the bow riser, with a cable system for synchronizing the limb movement while bending outwardly mounted springs by various means.
Still another type of mechanical bow is the Mattheck, et al bow, U.S. Pat. No. 4,803,970, Feb. 14, 1989, an ungainly bow which appears to be more suitable for throwing a heavy projectile a short distance, rather than being a suitable archery bow. While the above mentioned bows and others are passable archery bows, there are many undesirable characteristics found in these bows. For example: the Allen type bow has to have a relatively heavy eccentric wheel mounted at the tip of the limb to bend the short powerful limb. As the archer releases the string, the limb violently propels the eccentric wheel and cable system forward, which creates detrimental vibrations in the riser and limbs causing the string and the cable to oscillate while the arrow is leaving the bow, which causes the arrow to react differently with each shot, thus having a detrimental effect on accuracy and also creating a great deal of noise and hand shock to the archer. Still another problem with this type bow is limb splitting near the end, in the cutout which accommodates the eccentric wheel, caused by uneven pull by the cable and string system which are also subject to sudden failure because of the great stress and sudden shock loads imposed upon them.
The Islas bow, while solving some of the problems of the Allen type bow is a complex and ungainly bow with many intricate parts, which must be serviced by highly trained persons having access to a considerable amount of these intricate parts necessary to repair various types of such bows or a lengthy trip back to the factory to have repairs or adjustments made which causes an undesirable burden on the bow owner and the manufacturer. The Nishioka type bow, while being of a less complex nature is ungainly because of its outwardly mounted spring system and also lacks the appeal and beauty required to make this type bow acceptable to most archers. These and other numerous disadvantages inherit in these and other mechanical bows create a need for a new improved and simplified bow having overall appeal and beauty of the short powerful Turkish recurve bows.